5 things we are working on to improve our donor base health

In the first 7 days of January 12,063 amazing people registered to be blood donors, and 2,818 new people donated.

The active donor base at the end of December was 825,042, with O negative at 103,379. These numbers are far behind target and in particular there is an urgent need to grow the O negative donor base. The donor base has been declining over the past two decades so starting to strengthen it will require us to both significantly increase overall new donors and focused vulnerable group recruitment through Know Your Type.

We are starting off the new year with a recruitment campaign as people are making their resolutions. We have seen great press coverage over the last few weeks from our call outs to editors around stock and new donors and we have advertising running across digital TV stations that will reach under 35 year olds.

This week the Donor Management team sent out an email to all our existing donors asking them to recruit their family, who are more likely to be the same blood type. This has reached over 100,000 people.

I have spent some of January reviewing progress on some of the initiatives around the Donor Base Health improvement event we ran in October and here are some updates:

The January campaign investment has been significantly increased and we have TV advertising running to bring registration numbers up to support new donors giving a donation

Blood donation have agreement to a business case to expand donation at the West End Donor Centre, which will impact on Group A platelets from January and Whole Blood collection later in this year

We have found a tool which will tell our planning and marketing teams not only where our existing donors are, but areas of high retail and workforce footfall, to help move our sessions to the best areas. This is used for store planning in retail and we have had a demo of the tool and now we need to get on and procure a trial

We have changed our recruitment communications for platelets to make the time commitment clearer

We have tested some new ads about the use of blood in Cancer treatment and Childbirth with people who have shown an interest in these topic areas recently on social media and seen a better return on our investment.

If you have any feedback or questions about any of the above activities, please share in the comments section!